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5 Mar 2008 : Column 2622W—continued
Departmental Travel
Mr. Jeremy Browne: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice pursuant to the answer of 6 February 2008, Official Report, column 1186W, on departmental travel, what his Department's expenditure on travel and subsistence was in financial year 2006-07. [191351]
Maria Eagle: The spend on travel and subsistence in 2006-07 was as follows:
| £ | |
The Department has published rules for official travel in its staff handbook, and all travel is undertaken in accordance with the guidelines set out in the "Civil Service Management Code".
All ministerial travel is undertaken in accordance with the rules set out in the "Ministerial Code" and "Travel by Ministers", copies of which are available in the Libraries of the House.
Electoral Systems
Mr. Lancaster: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice when he expects to publish the Government Review of Electoral Systems. [191590]
Mr. Wills: The Government published the Review of the experience of the new voting systems introduced in the United Kingdom since 1997 on 24 January this year. I refer the hon. Member to the written ministerial statement I made upon publication, Official Report, column 61WS.
Freedom of Information
Mrs. May:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many freedom of information (FOI) requests the Open Government Unit received in each year since
2005; how many requests the unit took longer than (a) six months and (b) 12 months to respond to; and how many FOI requests the unit has failed to respond to. [190799]
Mr. Straw: Requests for information made to the National Offender Management Service under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 are processed centrally by the Open Government Unit (OGU). OGU received 508 requests in 2005, 1,130 in 2006, and 870 between January and September 2007. These are extracted from the latest certified Ministry of Justice returns which are published at quarterly intervals. The next figures covering the period up to the end of 2007 will be issued at the end of March / early April 2008. Of these 2,508 requests, 84 took longer than six months and nine longer than 12 months to respond to, the remaining requests were responded to in under six months.
Internet: Pornography
James Brokenshire: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many (a) prosecutions there were and (b) successful convictions were obtained for the publication or distribution of obscene matter or offensive material on the internet in each of the last three years. [191390]
Maria Eagle: The number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts and found guilty at all courts for offences relating to the publication or distribution of obscene or offensive material in England and Wales for the years 2004 to 2006 can be viewed in the table.
Court proceedings data are unable to separately identify those offences which relate specifically to the internet as the offences used are not internet specific.
Court proceedings data for 2007 will be available in the autumn of 2008.
| The number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates courts( 1) and found guilty at all courts for offences relating to the publications or distribution of obscene or offensive material in England and Wales for the years 2004 to 2006( 1,2,3) | ||
| Proceeded against | Found guilty | |
| (1 )These data are on the principal offence basis. (2) Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by the courts and police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. (3 )The offences used are not internet specific, the court proceedings database is unable to separately identify those offences which relate to internet based offences. (4) Includes the following statutes and offence description: Obscene Publications Act 1959 S.2(1)—Publishing obscene material. Having obscene article for publication for gain. Obscene Publications Act 1959 S.2—Having negative for publication of obscene article for gain. Communications Act 2003 S.127(1)(a)—Send by means of electronic communications network a message/matter which was grossly offensive or of an indecent/obscene/menacing character. Communications Act 2003 S.127(l)(b)—Cause to be sent by means of an electronic communications network a message/matter which was grossly offensive or of an indecent/obscene/menacing character. Malicious Communications Act 1988 S.1(1)(b)—Sending article which is in whole or in part indecent or grossly offensive. Source: Court Proceedings Database held by RDS Office for Criminal Justice Reform—Ministry of Justice | ||
Legal Profession
Mr. Roger Williams: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many solicitors have ceased providing legal services to clients who require legal aid in (a) total, (b) England and (c) Wales in each of the last three years. [189558]
Maria Eagle: Figures cannot be given for individual solicitors but only solicitor offices. They reflect the aggregate of decisions made by many individuals and hence are subject to frequent amendment as and when new information becomes available.
The reductions in the number of solicitor offices, for both civil and criminal legal aid in the last three years is as set out in the following table. The figures reflect the trend of the last several years for offices doing small amounts of legally aided work to drop out of the market or merge with other offices, so that work is done in larger volumes at fewer offices.
This trend has not affected significantly the ability of the public to obtain legal aid conveniently when they require it. 95 per cent. of the population of England and Wales live within five miles of a legal aid provider and the total number of acts of assistance given by providers has increased.
A solicitor office may hold both a civil and a criminal contract and the aggregate of civil and criminal offices does not reflect the total number of them. Neither is the location of a solicitor office necessarily an indication of where providers carry work out. A provider in England could carry out work in Wales and vice versa.
| 2006-07 | 2005-06 | 2004-05 | |
| (1) Excludes not for profit sector | |||
Legal Services Commission: Contracts
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many firms of solicitors held contracts with the Legal Services Commission for the supply of legal advice in family law matters in 2006. [191060]
Maria Eagle:
Contracts for the supply of legal advice in family law matters are held with the Community Legal Service (CLS). The CLS contracts with solicitors’ offices rather than firms and they may have more than one. 2,881 solicitors’ offices held contracts with the Legal Services Commission for the supply of legal advice in family law matters as at 31 March 2006.
Mineral Waters
Mr. Peter Ainsworth: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many litres of bottled water were purchased by his Department and its predecessor in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement. [191251]
Maria Eagle: My Department does not hold central records of the number of litres of bottled water purchased over the past three years. Such information could be provided only at disproportionate cost.
In response to the Act on CO2 Campaign the Ministry of Justice took steps in August 2007 to reduce its use of bottled water in meetings, and continues to look at further reductions in the use of bottled water where it is practicable to do so.
Ministerial Champion for Women and Criminal Justice
Mrs. May: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what meetings the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston has attended since 1 December 2007 in her role as Ministerial Champion for Women and Criminal Justice. [182740]
Maria Eagle: I have had meetings with the following stakeholders in my role as Ministerial Champion for Women in the Criminal Justice System.
The Minster for Women and Equality
The Attorney General and the Solicitor General
Right Hon Baroness Corston
Juliet Lyon, Director of the Prison Reform Trust
Frances Crook, Director of the Howard League for Penal Reform
The Royal College of Nursing (in prisons)
The Bishop for Prisons
Regional Offender Managers
The Right hon. Lord Bradley
The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health
The Inter Ministerial Group on Reducing Reoffending
The Director General of the Prison Service
The Chief Executive of the National Offender Management Service
The Chief Inspector of Prisons
The Director of Probation
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman
First inter-ministerial subgroup for overseeing implementation of the Corston recommendations
Ministerial Roundtable on Suicide
I have also established an Inter-Ministerial Sub-Group on Women Offenders and the implementation of the Corston Review.
Prisoners: Ex-servicemen
Mr. Llwyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what estimate he has made of the number and proportion of current inmates of prisons in England and Wales who served in the UK armed forces in either of the conflicts in the Gulf. [191336]
Mr. Hanson:
This information is not collected centrally. Data from nationally representative surveys of some 2,000 sentenced prisoners near release conducted in 2001, 2003 and 2004 show the proportion of prisoners who had previously served in the armed forces as 6 per cent., 4 per cent. and 5 per cent.
respectively. However, there are no estimates available for the proportion of veterans in custody who have served in specific conflicts.
Prisoners: Self-mutilation
Mr. Heath: To ask the Secretary of State for Justice how many recorded self-harm incidents there were in each prison in each of the last five years. [191782]
Maria Eagle: The information requested is provided in the following table:
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